If I Ever Turn into Gene Simmons, Shoot Me

It looks like Chaim Witz, more popularly known as Gene Simmons, will be the keynote speaker at a certain direct marketing conference this year. Good news for me, since there’s a couple thousand bucks I won’t have to spend. Maybe I’ll hold my own mini-conference at home and spring for a set of Seth’s DVDs.

After a day or two of gratitude that I hadn’t prepaid for this thing, it began to occur to me that I could derive a real communication benefit from Simmons.

I’m working on positioning documents for a new product I’m launching early next year, and Gene Simmons is the living embodiment of everything this product is not. If you’re having a hard time coming up a coherent marketing message, one tactic is to think of someone who embodies what you are. Another is to find your own personal Gene Simmons.

First, I’ll define the Simmons brand as I see it. I’m sure this misrepresents the living human being behind his persona. But since he makes his living by turning that intentionally obnoxious persona into a product, I call it fair game.

What is the Gene Simmons brand?

• He talks more than he listens.
• Therefore, he is markedly less intelligent than he could be.
• He treats smart women like bimbos. (This could be expanded to: He trashes people who see the world differently than he does.)
• Money is more important to him than anything.
• He considers his customers slack-jawed rubes.

What is the Greater Good Marketing brand?
(That’s the name I’m tossing around for this product. What do you think? An intriguing paradox you want to know more about, or a big pile of overly-good-for-you spinach? I was also thinking Good Karma Marketing, but that might be too crunchy even for me.)

So I’ll take those couple of bullet points and see if they can be turned on their heads in an interesting way.

• We listen more than we talk.
• That lets us take the time to understand who you are, which lets us make smart decisions about the right solution for your company.
• We make a point of learning from every viewpoint, not just the ones we happen to agree with. (OK, my entire post reveals that to be completely untrue. Might want to scrap this one.)
• Your success is more important to us than anything, including our bottom line.
• We know that our customers are intelligent, thoughtful people and we promise to treat you accordingly.

This isn’t a finished message by any means, but this ten-minute exercise gives me some interesting riffs to explore.

In general, it’s better to know what you are, not what you aren’t. But sometimes this kind of exercise can shake up your thinking and give you some ideas to build on. You could do this exercise with your least appealing competitor, too. Or Microsoft–everybody hates Microsoft. (Except me, but I’m notoriously weird.) Or the IRS.

Just remember to keep translating it back to benefits. Slagging people we don’t like is fun, but it takes some work to turn it into remarkable communication.